New film highlights life's work of Frank Cook

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The premiere of the short film, “The Green Man: A Tribute to Frank Cook,” will be a unique community event Saturday featuring half a dozen local nonprofits, hand-crafted foods, a raffle, and a scavenger hunt. The second floor of the Stonehouse Old Brewery will be the setting for this community event to educate and inspire the cultivation of area residents knowledge of the herbal and medicinal plants of our area.

“The Green Man” is a film on the life and works of Frank Cook, an herbalist, teacher, botanical explorer, transition culture activist, and pollinator who taught appreciation of nature’s abundance. Cook was a local to Nevada City, but a resident of the world. He spent two-thirds of his year away from here, traveling, teaching, learning and introducing himself to the plants of almost every continent.

He had a goal to meet one plant from each of the 700 families that make up the plant kingdom. When he passed away unexpectedly in 2009, that dream was not completed.

Cook was a visionary, and since his passing, his friends and family have been holding that vision in a unique and strong way.

“Eat something wild every day,” was something Frank encouraged people to do, and that became the motto of the organization that formed to carry on Cook’s legacy and life work. Plants and Healers International is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that people who want to learn about the abundant botanical world have resources to find these plants and the healers that use them.

The creation of a website (www.plantsandhealers.org) to house Cook’s extensive writing was just the first step. The organization has also republished Frank’s thesis, Emerging Planetary Medicine, and made it available to the public. And now the short film, “The Green Man: A Tribute To Frank Cook,” is complete! The 10-minute film, created by Jonah Matthewson of Bristlecone Media, has been two years in the making, and is to be released at this premiere showing in Nevada City. The premiere is from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday at the Stonehouse.

Organizers encourage the community to come out for an evening of education and memorial as they remember and celebrate the life of their friend and teacher, Frank Cummings Cook.